Cousin Betty's
confidences to Hortense were true; and it is evident that the porter's
wife might be very likely to slander Mademoiselle Fischer in her
intimate gossip with the Marneffes, while only intending to tell
tales.
When Lisbeth had taken her candle from the hands of worthy Madame
Olivier the portress, she looked up to see whether the windows of the
garret over her own rooms were lighted up. At that hour, even in July,
it was so dark within the courtyard that the old maid could not get to
bed without a light.
"Oh, you may be quite easy, Monsieur Steinbock is in his room. He has
not been out even," said Madame Olivier, with meaning.
Lisbeth made no reply. She was still a peasant, in so far that she was
indifferent to the gossip of persons unconnected with her. Just as a
peasant sees nothing beyond his village, she cared for nobody's
opinion outside the little circle in which she lived. So she boldly
went up, not to her own room, but to the garret; and this is why. At
dessert she had filled her bag with fruit and sweets for her lover,
and she went to give them to him, exactly as an old lady brings home a
biscuit for her dog.
She found the hero of Hortense's dreams working by the light of a
small lamp, of which the light was intensified by the use of a bottle
of water as a lens--a pale young man, seated at a workman's bench
covered with a modeler's tools, wax, chisels, rough-hewn stone, and
bronze castings; he wore a blouse, and had in his hand a little group
in red wax, which he gazed at like a poet absorbed in his labors.
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